8/28/2003 @ 6:30PM

Quarterbankers: The New Sports Sponsorships

In the last decade, U.S. corporations doled out millions to tag every professional sports arena in sight. The glamour of having their company’s name repeated a thousand times over in print, on television and online attracted the likes of
3Com
,
CMGI
and, of course,
Enron
, to multiyear stadium-naming deals.

Those deals, it turns out, were nothing but market-driven advertising air. When was the last time anyone bought anything (even stock) from CMGI?

The down economy caused everyone, from teams to stadiums to companies, to reconsider their expenses. It’s no surprise, then, that none of these three is still in the game. Based on recent deals, however, the value of aligning with a team or stadium hasn’t diminished. And for certain types of consumer-focused businesses, the media saturation provided by U.S. professional sports is hard to find anywhere else. Just like the European soccer leagues, companies are finding that they don’t even have to put their name on the front door.

Chicago-based
Bank One
, which already sponsors the stadium of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, realized this when it inked a 12-year multimillion-dollar deal with the NFL’s Chicago Bears in June. With naming rights to the recently-renovated Soldier Field not for sale, Bank One signed on to sponsor everything else Bears. The agreement, worth around $3 million per year, according to a source, is worth less than the most recent stadium deal–$5 million per year between the Baltimore Ravens and
M&T Bank
–but speaks to two trends: nonstadium sponsorships and a larger presence by financial firms looking for grass-roots marketing.

With major banks consolidating into financial supermarkets, sports teams allow these companies to reach all types of customers. For the NFL, the most popular and most profitable spectator sport in the U.S., financial firms have their names on five of 15 corporate-named stadiums and are premier sponsors for 18 of 32 teams.

Charlotte, N.C.-based
Wachovia
, whose branches stretch from Florida to Connecticut, has been the most active. On Monday, Wachovia added the NFL’s New York Giants to its roster of teams, including the Jacksonville Jaguars and Miami Dolphins. Tuesday, the company dipped to the college level and became the official financial-services sponsor of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Tar Heel Athletic Association.

With the transition of First Union-branded facilities to the Wachovia brand, the company also boasts Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center, home to the NBA’s 76ers and the National Hockey League’s Flyers. The City of Brotherly Love has become the hotbed of financial-services sponsorships–with Citizens Bank, a unit of
Royal Bank of Scotland
, set to sponsor the new Phillies stadium and Lincoln Financial, a unit of
Lincoln National
, plastered on the new Eagles facility.

Dan
Fleishman
Dan Fleishman
, director of sponsorships for Wachovia, says it inks “fully exclusive deals across all properties to reach out to the fan base.”

284620
James Dimon
Bank One
Wachovia is using its relationship with the Giants to introduce itself to the New York marketplace, having opened its first consumer-based branches in Manhattan this summer. That follows the strategy of M&T Bank, which earlier this summer bought the rights to all things Baltimore Ravens–even the marching band–a few weeks before the company officially moved to the city (see “M&T Nests In Baltimore“).

Bank One’s deal with the Bears does the same, minus the stadium rights. The organizations claim to have signed the first “presenting partner agreement” in NFL history.

The team’s relationship with Bank One, and past incarnations, began with loans to team founder
George
Halas
George Halas
, and has come all the way to handling financing for the stadium and treasury management for the team.

For many, on first glance, the Bears-Bank One deal was marked as a sellout for the football franchise, leading American sports franchises on the road toward European soccer sponsorships. For teams such as Manchester United, whose jerseys boast the logo of telecom giant
Vodafone
across the chest, the sponsor’s name is usually more prominent than that of the team. But, with stadium-naming rights, major sponsorships and “presenting partner agreements,” stateside professional sports are practically there already.

Will it go as far as logos on jerseys?

“With corporate America’s continued and insatiable appetite for association with the sports world, the likelihood is at least possible,” says
Dean
Bonham
Dean Bonham
, chairman and chief executive of sports-marketing adviser
The Bonham Group
in Denver. Bonham advised Pittsburgh-based
PNC Financial Services
on its $2-million-per-year naming for baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates stadium.

Bonham says that for a bank, which faces consumers every day, sports teams provide three major elements for marketing: comprehensive benefits through multiple events, integrated opportunities for sponsorship and a venue for direct interaction.

He says teams, which are becoming more costly to operate, “are trending toward a higher degree of commercialism.” The Bears-Bank One partnership is “a classic example of a franchise willing to be creative in reaching the next level,” Bonham says.

And, if that next level were to eventually mean branding the uniforms, consumers–who already don
Gap
,
Abercrombie & Fitch
and
Nike
names and logos prominently–will step right in line.